One of the highlights of Veterans Week was a speech delivered by former Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta, the first surviving recipient of the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War.

“This is a pretty special event for me,” Giunta said.

Giunta received the Medal of Honor, the highest possible decoration in the Armed Forces, for heroic actions during an ambush when he was stationed in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan.

Giunta began his military service at the age of 18. He was working at a Subway in Iowa after graduating from high school and heard a radio ad promising a free T-shirt to anyone who checked out the recruiting office. After talking to a recruiter, Giunta decided to join the Army as an airborne infantryman.

As an 18-year-old member of the “world’s greatest military,” Giunta said he felt invincible going to Afghanistan. He lost that feeling when a friend of his was killed two and a half months into his first deployment. He said he realized the true cost of freedom after his friend’s death and how lucky Americans are.

“We are so blessed, so fortunate to be born American because it is one of the few places where we have nothing to fear,” Giunta said.

On that first deployment Giunta took a ricochet bullet to his leg, but passed over it as if it were barely worth mentioning, demonstrating the mindset of soldiers like him.

“The rest of the deployment went fairly well,” Giunta said. “I took a ricochet in my leg. Inconsequential. These things happen.”

He was later stationed in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan, made famous by the 2010 documentary “Restrepo” by Sebastian Junger. Despite the Korengal being considered one of the most dangerous posts in Afghanistan, Giunta just described his deployment there as “a little bit rougher.”

Giunta and his platoon were walking back from a mission he described as fairly routine on Oct. 25, 2007, when they were ambushed by Taliban forces only 10 meters away. His squad leader ran ahead in an attempted to link up with another squad, but was hit in the helmet. Giunta described the area his squad leader had run toward was essentially a “wall of lights” created by tracer fire.

Despite the obvious danger of the exposed area, Giunta rushed out to drag his sergeant out of harms way. Later in the firefight he shot at some Taliban fighters attempting to take one of his squad-mates prisoner. For his actions during the fight Giunta was awarded the Medal of Honor, though he insisted several times throughout his speech that he did not do anything special compared to his squad mates.

“I know exactly what I did is exactly what they did,” Giunta said.

He said some of the greatest heroes are those who never receive recognition for their sacrifices, and stressed that what makes the army so great is the individual heroes who comprise it.

After his speech Giunta opened the floor for questions and more than 20 people, including a variety of audience members like Vietnam veterans and 10-year-old boys, thanked him for his service and asked a variety of questions. He fielded questions about his opinion of journalists, his future and gave some advice to ROTC cadets.

The event closed with Allan Rodgers, a veteran of the Korean War, thanking Giunta for his service.

“You’ve restored the patriotism that we need to hear,” he said.

Giunta left the military in June 2011 and is now attending Colorado State University.